What is endocarditis?

What causes inflammation of the inner lining of the heart, how the disease is detected, and which methods for its diagnosis.

Endocarditis is an inflammation of the inner lining of the heart, which is possible with rheumatism, with diffuse connective tissue diseases, with an infection that is triggered by bacterial lesions.

In a large number of cases detected and documented in medicine, most often affected by altered heart valves with congenital, acquired heart defects, as well as valve prostheses.

Before the advent of antibiotics in medicine, most patients with infective endocarditis died from infection and subsequent complications.

Modern medicine successfully cope with this disease by medical treatment and surgical intervention.

Manifestations of endocarditis

The main symptoms of endocarditis:

Increase in body temperature, which is accompanied by a fever and a strong sweating;

Joint pain;

Pallor of the skin and mucous membranes.

With heart valve damage, the symptoms of the disease may be manifested as with a heart defect. Inflammation of the heart muscle is often manifested by arrhythmia, heart failure.

When vessels are involved in the process of endocarditis, there are vasculitis, inflammation of the walls of the vessels, thrombosis, aneurysms, hemorrhagic rashes on the skin, heart attacks of the spleen and kidneys.

In infectious endocarditis, systemic manifestations can be observed when other organs are affected: the liver and kidneys. Complications of endocarditis can be:

Causes of endocarditis

Infectious endocarditis can get sick and practically healthy people, when their immunity is reduced due to the large physical, psychological overload, constant interaction with the microbes.

In order to reach the heart valve, the microbe should get into the bloodstream. For blood flow the microorganism falls into the heart.

If the heart valves have any damage, then this microorganism easily adheres to them and, multiplying, creates whole colonies of their own, which leads to heart failure due to the destruction of the valve.

Diagnostics

The determination of endocarditis in the patient's body helps to study echocardiography, which makes it possible to detect damage to the heart valves and the expansion of bacterial colonies.

In clinical studies of blood tests, pathogens endocarditis are detected and the ability to determine their sensitivity to antibiotics appears.